Iraqi immigrant guilty in wife's murder

Murder suspect Kassim Alhimidi reacts to being found guilty in William J. McGrath's courtroom for the murder of his wife Shaima Alawadi. As the verdict was read the victim's mother and the defendant's son yelled in court and he was dragged from court. Defense attorney Richard Berkon sits at left.
— John Gastaldo

Murder suspect Kassim Alhimidi reacts to being found guilty in William J. McGrath's courtroom for the murder of his wife Shaima Alawadi. As the verdict was read the victim's mother and the defendant's son yelled in court and he was dragged from court. Defense attorney Richard Berkon sits at left.
— John Gastaldo

EL CAJON  A family’s ongoing pain and torment played out vividly in a courtroom Thursday afternoon when a father of five was convicted in the bludgeoning death of his wife.

Kassim Alhimidi, 49, shook his head and wagged his finger at the jury when he heard the verdict: guilty of first-degree murder.

Again and again, he put his head down on the desk in front of him, and then appeared to be praying. He spoke loudly in Arabic several times in the El Cajon courtroom, ignoring his lawyer’s attempts to comfort and calm him down.

That’s when his eldest son stood up and shouted expletives, but it was unclear whether he disagreed with the verdict itself, or his father’s reaction to it. The 17-year-old was removed from the courtroom by family members and sheriff’s deputies.

Deputies indicated he would likely be cited and released later in the day.

Prosecutors argued in trial that Alhimidi killed his wife, 32-year-old Shaima Alawadi in a surprise attack inside the family’s rented home on Skyview Street. On the morning of March 21, 2012, she was beaten in the head at least six times with a blunt object, possibly a tire iron.

The victim had threatened to divorce her husband, but he resisted, according to the testimony.

The couple’s teenage daughter, Fatima, was home during the attack and found her mother lying near the kitchen in a pool of blood. A nearby glass door had been shattered.

She called 911.

Alawadi was taken to a hospital where she died a few days later.

Investigators found a note on the floor, several feet from the mother, telling the family to go back to their home country and referring to them as “terrorist.” The note initially led police to suspect the attack was a hate crime.

It turned out to be a photocopy of a note found at the home about a week earlier.

Alhimidi and his wife were from Iraq, but married in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia. All of their children were raised in the United States.

The defendant told police he was not home when his wife was attacked. He said he went for a drive to calm his nerves after taking medication for a kidney condition.

Deputy District Attorney Kurt Mechals argued that Alhimidi had lied about where he was that morning.

Surveillance video from a nearby school and other buildings show a vehicle matching Alhimidi’s minivan stopping around the corner from the family home, and a person getting out and walking toward the house.

Alhimidi was arrested nearly eight months after his wife’s death.

Defense lawyer Richard Berkon had argued that Alhimidi was not a violent man and that he had no motive to kill his wife. The attorney said it was Fatima who had lied about a forbidden relationship with a young man, and made inconsistent statements to police about the morning of the attack.

Fatima cried in the courtroom and hugged her grandmother Thursday after the jurors had been cleared from the courtroom. Moments earlier, the grandmother — Shaima’s mother — had shouted at the father in Arabic, telling him he deserved worse than a murder conviction.